Thirteen years ago, I was introduced to a new world...The World of Warcraft. I remember I was watching my brother play this game (I had no idea what it was) and I was trying to tell him about how Runescape was a much better game than he was playing. It was a furious battle of witty retorts back and forth ultimately resulting in his argument crushing mine.
He told me he had to run to the toilet and mentioned that I was not allowed to touch his computer while he was gone. Well, me being me decided to ignore that last part. I hopped on his computer and started moving his character around. It was an amazing place, one like I had never seen before. Heck, the graphics were amazing, I was used to spending six hours a day staring at runescape, WoW was a bloody masterpiece.
I was running around the port of Auberdine when all of a sudden a message popped up on my screen saying "X player wants to duel Do you accept?"
When my brother came back in the room I was sitting on his bed just as I was before. I tried to hide what I did for a second but I couldn't contain it any longer. "I fought this guy, and he turned into a bear but I still won!" I bellowed.
This was my first experience in the World of Warcraft and I will never forget it.
From that moment, my passion for World of Warcraft has grown and grown. In my teenage years it reached a point where I would consider myself an addict. In school holidays I would easily play sixteen hours a day. In my thirteen years of playing I have racked up over one years worth of game time. That is actual time sitting at my computer playing World of Warcraft. While I think that time would have been better spent on something like developing talents in coding or learning an instrument, World of Warcraft has given me so much and taught me some incredible skills.
My first character was a Tauren hunter named Eddy that reached level thirty. Following Eddy was my previous main character an Undead rogue named Vereth. Vereth and I travelled vast distances, seeing many different landscapes and defeating many different kinds of foes. During some rough time in my early teen years with my separating, Vereth and World of Warcraft were there for me. World of Warcraft was my escape, a place where I could be anyone and do anything that I wanted to. I didn't have to worry about life, I just had to worry about having fun.
There were times that I would fake being sick to skip school to make sure I was home to raid with the American guild I was in. Everything was taken so seriously in these raids. You had to make sure you showed up wearing the right gear and had read strategies before being allowed to be a part of the group. I believe that this assisted in teaching me about responsibility. While incredibly small and rather trivial being a game, if I wanted to do something I enjoyed I had to make sure that I had done everything else required beforehand to be able to have said fun. A lot of this raid time was spent in Molten Core for those who know WoW.
As time went on I became more and more dedicated to World of Warcraft. I took pride in knowing more about the game than anyone else that I knew. I had even conned my dad to sign up (we still play together) so we could talk easier from different states. My brother, my dad and I decided to start a guild together. At 16 I was the guild leader. This was at the start of the Burning Crusade expansion. It was also when we decided to switch to The Alliance. (Please don't flag my post for being Alliance :P) Over time we recruited a lot of core members to our guild. This started a whole new ball game. No longer could I just go on to the internet, read a boss strategy and show up to a raid. I now had to organise raid schedules, which meant having ten people around the world coordinated at a specific time to go and kill some bad guys.
I also had to learn how to deal with disputes between members, whether it be who got what item or who put in the most work to get enough gold for the guild I had to be there to act as mediator between two people. I always found it quite strange putting myself in this position as a 16-17 year old when these were men 25+. I had to learn how to keep people motivated, when we would spend a whole night fighting one boss and dying over and over. It was tough, spirits were low however I knew that when we finally did kill the boss the feeling would be incredible. What I am trying to say is that being a guild master taught me leadership skills. It gave me an insight into effective coaching methods. It may seem silly to say teaching people how to play a game is considered coaching however, I am a coach in my professional life now and it is essentially the same. The only real difference is the material.
People can say that we spend way too much time sitting at our computers playing video games. While in some cases this is true we are also benefiting from gaming immensely. Games help you to feel happy, they help your hand eye co-ordination, they help you build friendships, social skills, leadership skills, conflict resolution, problem solving skills, attention to detail, the list is nearly endless. Head over to This Link to read an article about World of Warcraft developing tomorrows leaders. Gaming is something that I will present to my son when he is ready. He will be taught that gaming in moderation will not only be fun, it will benefit him in more ways than he knows.
World of Warcraft is an MMORPG - Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game. While the community is different now than it was years ago you still need to learn how to effectively communicate with different people. You can build real friendships and relationships through this platform. World of Warcraft changed the gaming world for the better when it originally released. It will continue to change the lives of people around the world for years to come.
